In testing and troubleshooting electrical cables a typical test involves using test instruments that transmit stimulus signals into one end of a cable and receive and measure any reflections that return. Both time-domain reflectometry (TDR) and time-domain crosstalk (TDX) measurements are subject to two major types of problems. One is attempting to identify all modes of failure and the other is attempting to identify all time domain events. These problems typically introduce many false positive results and often hinder attempts to locate connectors.
As data transmission rates have steadily increased, modular connectors with improved crosstalk performance have been designed to meet the increasingly demanding standards. In particular, recent connectors have introduced predetermined amounts of crosstalk compensation to cancel offending near end crosstalk (NEXT). As a result, TDX measurements no longer can robustly detect all connector faults in the cable.